Sivateja Tangirala, of Sugar Land, Texas, did not advance to the semifinal round of the 2011 Scripps National Spelling Bee. (Scripps Photo)

Sivateja Tangirala’s bid for a national spelling title was cut short Wednesday when the Sugar Land student failed to qualify for the semifinal round of the 2011 Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Tangirala is one of 275 spellers who participated in the second and third rounds of the Bee on stage in a vast Maryland hotel ballroom. Contestants blazed through words like “purfle”– an ornamental border– and “sapiential” — characterized by wisdom — but stumbled on such zingers as “dieffenbachia”– a genus of tropical plants.

The seventh-grader at Fort Settlement Middle School swayed and fiddled with his nametag in the Bee’s morning round as the Bee’s pronouncer, Jacques Bailly, asked for the spelling of “intaglio.” Tangirala briefly paused, asked for the word’s language of origin -– it is Italian­­ — and rattled off the correct spelling.

The 12-year-old fidgeted while waiting for his round three word, “bailiwick.” But after asking for the noun’s definition, origin and part of the speech, Tangirala correctly spelled the word with a steady voice.

But his flawless on-stage spelling performances failed to garner enough points when combined with the results of a 25-word written test and Tangirala was one of 234 spellers eliminated Wednesday. He declined to comment on the loss.

At the end of round three, Bee officials eliminated the 234 lowest-scoring spellers. The remaining 41 spellers will head to the semifinal round, with a chance of nabbing a coveted spot in the championship round Thursday evening. To secure a spot in the semifinals, a speller needed a score of 29 out of 31 possible points — a score that allowed for only two misspellings on the written test and perfect on stage score.

In the semifinal and championship rounds, a speller is eliminated once he or she misspells.

The winner will receive a $30,000 cash prize from Scripps, a $2,500 savings bound and a complete reference library from Merriam-Webster, a $5,000 scholarship from the Sigma Phi Epsilon Educational Foundation, $2,600 worth of reference works from Encyclopaedia Britannica and an online course and a Nook eReader from K12 Inc.

The semifinals and the championship round will be broadcast by Thursday by ESPN. The final showdown begins on-stage at 7:30 p.m. CDT.